Thursday, March 12, 2009

Open letter from Anthony Marr to President Obama

Recently, the famed British scientist James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia Hypothesis, published an article which did nothing to soften its hard title of "Life Doomed by Climate Woes" - without even an "unless".. Life is doomed already - a foregone conclusion.. A slow bomb has started to explode, and there is nothing we can do to hold it back, much less shut it back down..

This was a little hard to take for even a hard-boiled climate change activist like myself, a certified cup-half-full type of guy who always sees around every dark cloud a bright silver lining.. In this case, I still see a silver lining, but I had to put on Coke-bottle glasses first..

Why am I, the incurable optimist, sounding so pessimistic? Let me be blunt.. I had put a lot of hope in Mr. Obama, your new president, a guiding light for the world, the savior of future generations, champion of change and transformation. . And I am fearful that he might not make it in his given and chosen mission..

Granted, he is a great political athlete, but it is now an Olympian game of life and death, in which the hurdles are unprecedented. . He has only one chance to set a record.. If he falls short, we are doomed.. He is the Make- It-or-Break-It US president, and further, the Make- It-or-Break-It untitled leader of the world.. If he makes it, our children would have a future.. If he breaks it, we'd be dead and will drag millions of species down with us.. He faces many unknowns but he must arrive at whatever future destination that can support life on Earth, if any.. If he stray an inch from his optimal path, he might fall off a cliff, bring all his followers with him.. He will have to do many things never done before, and shed many old ways of doing things which have brought us to where we are in the first place.. He will step on lots of toes, simply because the right wing of human nature is to maintain the status quo and therefore resist the change that he strives to personify.. He will need the courage to piss off a lot of influential and dangerous people, even at risk of injury or death.. He must be the irresistible force that moves the immovable object.. He must do it because it is what Mother Nature has written into his job description, and the future of our children is in his hands..

Let me give one simple example of what this immovable object is.. "Growth is good.. Recession is bad.. Therefore, we must stimulate consumption to re-expand the economy.." This is in spite of the ground- breaking book "The Limits to Growth" published by the Club of Rome way back in 1972.. Basically, it says that the Earth is finite, and we cannot grow indefinitely without exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet.. Had we heeded it, and abided by it in action, our world would be a far safer place than it is now..

To demolish this immovable object, the irresistible force must first himself realize the truth of the matter.. 1 - We have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet.. 2 - The carrying capacity of the planet is being further diminished daily by our continued destructive actions.. 3 - Our demands on Earth's resources and ecological tolerance increase daily.. 4 - He who has lived beyond his means must tighten his belt to regain credit and equilibrium.. 5 - He who tightens his belt should not borrow more money in order to loosen it, or to refurbish his mansion.. 6 - The current global economic downturn is Mother Nature's way of tightening our belt for us (since we don't seem to have the wisdom or the dignity to do it voluntarily ourselves).. 7 - Therefore, to borrow more money from China to inject into the US marketplace to stimulate consumption to attempt reboosting the US economy is EXACTLY the WRONG thing to do..

President Obama has chosen Dr Stephen Chu as his science advisor, so he must have realized the direness of the global environmental crisis.. Yet, bowing to the money- conscious public and industrial pressures, he is talking first and foremost, by far, about the economy, WHILE THE EARTH BURNS.. He should have realized that adding greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere can only worsen an already abysmal situation in the global ECOLOGY (vs ECONOMY), and yet, he is promoting coal, and not boycotting the use of dirty Canadian oil in his own country as over 700 US mayors - his underlings - have done for their own cities.. And he should have realized that the United States, his and your country, is heading for a century-long drought which could cause starvation even in the "richest country in the world", since even at this relatively early stage the world is already in the state of food crisis, and the human population is still exploding..

This is to talk provincially since the first duty of the president of the United States is to his own country.. But we have gone way past the era of nationalism, and must think and act globally.. Whether he wants the honor or not, he is the uncrowned leader of the World (albeit with enormous dissension from competing cultures and nations).. At least, he is the person to whom most looked for global leadership, and he cannot sacrifice the World to a country - any country, even the United States.. He must provide leadership not only for the US environment, but the global environment.. He must understand, then convince the world, that the global economic recession or even depression is not a downturn, but a necessity - a necessary thing our species must go through to regain balance with the planet..

According to Lovelock, we are doomed no matter what we do, but we can make ourselves less doomed than more.. The best course for the US president is to pour as much of the available money as possible into building a radically new and green national and global energy infrastructure based on a new, renewable, non-combustion energy technology which can take over from the combustion technology, pay for itself, and further generate wealth for the society from using the free and renewable energy sources and resources.. To spend most of the money on repaving roads and building more bridges at this time, and in even excellent social programs, or in cutting taxes by a few hundred dollars each to stimulate buying (especially goods made with the fossil fuels), to use up this needed capital for something we currently can eek by without, and in the end have nothing to show for it except an elevated standard of living necessitating yet more non-existent money to sustain, is not only to commit political suicide once it is all said and done, but to commit progenocide against all future generations.. With a new infrastructure that can pay for itself and for society, there will then be the money to pave the roads and build the bridges and, if the American people insist, lower the taxes..

Global warming deniers are still saying, incredibly, that since we had a cold winter, global warming is a hoax.. There is no point to try to convince them, but let's look a little beyond our physical horizon.. It has been predicted well before hand that global warming would cause major droughts all over the world, specifically mentioned over a decade ago including Australia, the Amazon and the United States (Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Montana, California, among others).. All three have come to pass and are still in the process of coming true to whatever full and devastating future extent already predestined by the all the present and by and large irreversible trajectories we have carved on the wall..

And they are just 3 tips of the global drought "iceberg".. The others, less known, include Afghanistan, Argentina, Bali, Bolivia, China (northern), Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Moldova, Niger, Peru, Somalia, West Timor, among others.. We are talking about a global proliferation of severe droughts, complete with desertification in previously fertile regions, with floods in other normally dry places, both destroying what is left of the world's arable lands, thus deepening the global food crisis, not to mention the species loss (millions in the Amazon) due to the resultant desertification ..

The American people, led by President Obama, must bite the bullet today, and keep their belts tight or even tighter, and "Boldly go where no one has gone before" in term of a new principle and direction for our species, and focus our ingenuity in meeting the climate change challenge, and let our sacrificial and fighting spirit shine forth once and for all time.. We must transform our species Homo Sapiens from a world destroyer into a world savior - OVERNIGHT.. No god, no alien, is going to do it for our planet. It is all up to us..

We might have a window of 3 years or so to get this done.. In other words, all that need be done must be done within the 44th US president's first term.. If he doesn't make good in his first term, his second term wouldn't matter, nor would the first term of whatever new 45th president (possibly Sarah Palin).. The 44th president is the Make- It-or-Break-It president.. He has only one chance to do it right, and do it right within his first term, that is, now..

So, where is the silver lining? We'll, the Chinese term for "crisis" is "dangerous opportunity".. But it would be up to the US president to take the opportunity to resolve our dangerous crisis and further create for our children a better world derived from the brightest of our 21st Century visions..

British scientist James Lovelock, famous for his Gaia theory of the Earth being a kind of living organism, said higher temperatures will turn parts of the world into desert and raise sea levels, flooding other regions..

British scientist James Lovelock, famous for his Gaia theory of the Earth being a kind of living organism, said higher temperatures will turn parts of the world into desert and raise sea levels, flooding other regions..

LONDON - Climate change will wipe out most life on Earth by the end of this century and mankind is too late to avert catastrophe, a leading British climate scientist said..

James Lovelock, 89, famous for his Gaia theory of the Earth being a kind of living organism, said higher temperatures will turn parts of the world into desert and raise sea levels, flooding other regions..

His apocalyptic theory foresees crop failures, drought and death on an unprecedented scale.. The population of this hot, barren world could shrink from about seven billion to one billion by 2100 as people compete for ever-scarcer resources..

"It will be death on a grand scale from famine and lack of water," Lovelock told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.. "It could be a reduction to a billion (people) or less.."

By 2040, temperatures in European cities will rise to an average of 110 Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) in summer, the same as Baghdad and parts of Europe in the 2003 heatwave..

"The land will gradually revert to scrub and desert. You can look at as if the Sahara were steadily moving into Europe.. It's not just Europe; the whole world will be changing in that way.."

Attempts to cut emissions of planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) in an attempt to reduce the risks are probably doomed to failure, he added..

Even if the world found a way of cutting emissions to zero, it is now too late to cool the Earth..

"It is a bit like a supertanker.. You can't make it stop by just turning the engines off," he said before the release of a new book on climate change..

"It will go on for a long, long time.. If by some magic you could suddenly bring the C02 down, it wouldn't suddenly cool off.."

Campaigns to promote recycling and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power are a waste of time, Lovelock adds, although he concedes that nuclear power will help meet growing demand for energy..

While financial markets and politicians promote carbon emissions trading schemes to reduce emissions and help the environment, Lovelock says they, too, will have little effect..

"I don't see the efforts of governments around the world succeeding in doing anything significant to cut back the emissions of carbon dioxide," he said..

Efforts should instead be focused on creating safe havens in areas which will escape the worst effects of climate change..

In his book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia", he adds: "We have to stop pretending that there is any possible way of returning to that lush, comfortable and beautiful Earth we left behind some time in the 20th century.."

The destruction of natural ecosystems for farmland, deforestation and the rapid growth of the human race and livestock have all exacerbated the problem, he added..

Scientists should not underestimate the crucial role of the oceans as an indicator of rising temperatures and tool for reducing carbon dioxide, Lovelock argues..

"Most of the Earth's surface is the ocean.. That holds 800 times more than the atmosphere or the land.. And there is no question that the ocean is steadily warming," he said..

A former skeptic of doom-laden predictions, Lovelock admits he is not entirely comfortable with his role as a modern-day Cassandra, the cursed prophetess of Greek mythology whose counsel was ignored..

However, he says the scale and speed of the looming crisis are so great he must speak out. He is still struck by the public's apparent lack of urgency about the problem..

"Don't blame me for the terrible predictions," said Lovelock, a sprightly, trim figure with silver hair who looks younger than his age and was soberly dressed in navy jumper, tie and casual trousers..

"The UN's IPCC ( Intergovernment al Panel on Climate Change) even in its 2001 report was suggesting temperatures by 2040 and 2050 that were devastatingly hot.. All I'm doing is drawing people's attention to it.."

Winter, if you can call what we've had winter is way different from what I recall as a child. Not nearly as cold, nor does it last as long as it had in the past. Last year alone, we broke many record highs. Our hot summer temperatures started in Spring. We've been in a drought for the last year and a half. Farmers and cattle ranchers are hit hard. There's no pasture, it's become mostly dirt and maybe small patches of dead grass. Ranchers have been forced to reduce herds and maybe have only 25% of them left. Water is drying up and livestock is dying. Hay is incredible expensive. A disaster declaration has already been made and this was before the huge wildfire we had recently. Lack of rain has caused many trees to die. We still have more dead trees we need to cut down. They were stressed by the drought which made them vulnerable to bark beetles. Oaks, beautiful huge pines have died. We are so far behind on rain and have started this year the same way. I keep water out for the birds, wild rabbits, frogs, deer, coyotes. ...whoever needs a drink. Mornings and evenings, I'll see the frogs sitting in the water. They have their own special place I put out for them and our tree frogs are still around. They bug hunt on the side of our house by the outside lights. Just observing all these creatures is so enjoyable. Simple pleasures. I believe too many people have forgotten those.

No comments:

About Anthony Marr

Anthony Marr
* has a degree in physics
* is the author of "OMNI-SCIENCE and the Human Destiny" (2003) and "Homo Sapiens SAVE YOUR EARTH" (2008)
* 1995, he cleaned up N. American Chinatowns of endangered species medicines
* 1996, he led "the highest-profile anti-trophy-hunting campaign in Canada" (Globe and Mail).
* 1997-1999, he worked in 3 tiger reserves in India.
* 1999, he founded Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE).
* 2004/2005, he conducted operations in Japan against whaling and dolphin slaughter.
* 2003-2011, completed 7 Compassion for Animals Road Expeditions (CARE tours, each covering 30-45 states over 4-7 months), and spoke at the National AR Conference every year
* 2009, he founded the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC)
* 2010, he won the Henry Spira Grassroots Activist Award.
www.HOPE-CARE.org
www.facebook.com/AnthonyMarr001
www.HomoSapiensSaveYourEarth.blogspot.com
www.AnthonyMarr13.wordpress.com
www.Dying-for Salvation.blogspot.com